I pulled the guy out [an E6 interrogator, and said]: I
lookedI looked this stuff up and this is not the way its supposed to be, you
know? He was like, This is the directive we had. You need to go ahead and drop
this, sergeant. You know, and he outranked me. Drop this sergeant, [he
said]. It was repeatedly emphasized to me that this was not a wise course of
action to pursue . . . It was blown off, but it was a little more stern: You
dont want to take this inquiry anywhere else, kind of thing. You should
definitely drop this; this is not something you wanna do to yourself.-
U.S. Army M.P.
Sergeant stationed at Forward Operating Base Tiger, al Qaim, Iraq, in 2003, describing his efforts to complain about detainee abuse.

I was very annoyed with them because they were saying
things like we didnt have to abide by the Geneva Conventions, because these
people werent POWs. . . . [T]heyre enemy combatants, theyre not POWs, and so
we can do all this stuff to them and so forth. . . . It just went against everything
we learned at Huachuca.-
Military
Intelligence Interrogator attached to a secretive task force stationed at Camp Nama, at Baghdad airport in Iraq, describing a briefing by military lawyers in early 2004
after soldiers raised concerns about abusive interrogation methods.

U.S. forces have now been deployed in Iraq for over three years. During this time, tens of thousands of Iraqis have been arrested,
detained, and interrogated by U.S. personnel. Many of the detaineesheld at
Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) or at central detention centers such as Abu
Ghraib prison, Camp Cropper, and Camp Buccahave been interrogated by personnel
from U.S. Military Intelligence (MI) or the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). While
some detainees have been insurgents, others have been innocent civilians caught
up in U.S. military operations, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There is mounting evidence to show that many detainees have
been abused. The Abu Ghraib scandal, which broke in April 2004, brought the
issue of detainee abuse to the worlds attention, but it is now clear that the
scope of the problem is far broader than was known at the time. Since 2003, Human
Rights Watch has reviewed hundreds of credible allegations of serious mistreatment
and torture of detainees in U.S. custody. Alleged abuses have taken place in
locations all over Iraq, in both FOBs and centralized facilities, and have involved
CIA agents, military interrogators, MP guards, and ordinary combat soldiers. Abuses
have also been alleged in detention facilities in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, where smaller numbers of detainees are held. In many cases, it has taken
years for abuses to come to light.

This report is based largely on firsthand accounts by U.S. military personnel stationed in Iraq, and describes abuses that took place in three separate
locations in Iraq in 2003-2005. Many of the accounts are from soldiers who
witnessed and in some cases participated in the abuses. First, the report
discusses incidents involving a special military and CIA task force based at Camp Nama, near Baghdad, in 2003-2004, and near Balad in 2004-2005. Second, the report describes
abuses in 2003-2004 at a Forward Operating Base on the Syrian border, called
FOB Tiger. Third, the report details abuses in 2004 at detention facilities at
the Mosul airport. The militarys own investigations and reports by journalists
and other observers support many of the accounts, and provide further details
from soldiers about abuses at these facilities, including abuses in 2005.

In all three locations, soldiers witnessed seriously abusive
treatment and interrogation of detainees, including beatings, psychological torture
of varying kinds, and other physical torture and mistreatment. At Camp Nama, for instance, detainees were regularly stripped naked, subjected to sleep
deprivation and extreme cold, placed in painful stress positions, and beaten. At
FOB Tiger, they were held without food or water for over 24 hours at a time, in
temperatures sometimes exceeding 135 degrees Fahrenheit, and then taken into
interrogations where they were beaten and subjected to threats. At Mosul,
detainees were regularly subject to extreme sleep deprivation, exposure to
extreme cold, forced exercises, and were threatened with military guard dogs.

In all three locations, the abuses appear to have been part
of a regularized process of detainee abusestandard operating procedure, in
the words of some of the soldiers.

The accounts in this report provide compelling new evidence
that detainee abuse was an established and apparently authorized part of the
detention and interrogation processes in Iraq for much of 2003-2005. The accounts
also suggest that U.S. military personnel who felt the practices were wrong and
illegal have faced significant obstacles at every turn when they attempted to
report or expose the abuses.

One military interrogator, cited at the beginning of this
report, described to Human Rights Watch what happened when he and other colleagues
complained about abuses to the colonel on duty: a team of two JAG officers,
JAG lawyers, came and gave us a couple hours slide show on why this is
necessary, why this is legal, theyre enemy combatants, theyre not POWs, and
so we can do all this stuff to them and so forth. After that presentation, the
interrogator said, the abuses continued, but he and the others who were unhappy
with the situation felt that they had nowhere else to turn. As far as he knew,
no other reporting mechanism existed. That was
it, case closed, he explained. There was nobody else to talk to.

Many of the soldiers who have spoken with Human Rights Watch
about detainee abuse have voiced anger at the way their concerns and complaints
were dismissed, and said that they decided to speak publicly because they were
concerned about the systemic problems that made reporting abuse so difficult.

* * * *
*

The military and the Bush Administration appear to be in
denial. Both have consistently portrayed abuse cases from Iraq as exceptional
and perpetrators as lone and independent actorsrotten applesdespite
evidence that Military Intelligence officers and higher-echelon military and
civilian leaders knew about or may even have authorized abusive techniques that
were used against detainees. Such sweeping denials, and the militarys general
failure to place any blame on leadership for abuses that occurred, have
hindered candid assessments about the detainee abuse problem.

Take, for example, the role of U.S. Military Intelligence
(MI) in formulating and executing interrogation and detention policy in Iraq. There are clear indications that MI battalions systematized the use of abusive
techniques in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, and that MI interrogatorsincluding
officersare implicated in the widespread abuses that occurred during that
time. As detailed in this report, internal military documents and soldiers own
accounts show that MI interrogators were using abusive tactics through much of
2003-2005; and that for much of this time these tactics were authorized by
officers up the chain of command. Yet to date, no military intelligence
officers who have served in Iraq have been charged with any criminal acts,
either as a principal or under the doctrine of command responsibility. The few
courts-martial that have occurred in relation to detainee abuse in Iraq have primarily involved military police, most of whom have claimed in courts-martial
that they were ordered or authorized by military intelligence interrogators to
use the tactics they were charged with.

Notably, Gen. Barbara Fast, the chief of military
intelligence in Iraq during the period of the most serious abuseslate 2003
through 2004has since been promoted for her work in Iraq. She is now the
commander of the Army Intelligence Center, the U.S. Armys interrogation school
at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

CIA personnel have also gone unpunished. Several homicide
cases, involving detainees who died while being interrogated by the CIA, were
referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution in 2004 and 2005, yet to
date not one CIA agent has been charged. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly
urged Justice Department officials to move forward with the investigation and
prosecution of civilian personnel implicated in abuses, but as of June 2006
only a single civilian contractor had been indicted, for a case from Afghanistan. And there are others who have escaped investigation as wellfor instance, military
Judge Advocate Generals, Special Forces personnel, and civilian leadership in
the Department of Defense.

Human Rights Watch is aware that U.S. forces in Iraq are fighting armed groups who themselves have shown little willingness to abide by
international humanitarian law. As Human Rights Watch has detailed in
previous reports, Iraqi insurgent groups routinely violate international
humanitarian law, carrying out abductions and attacks against civilians and
humanitarian aid workers, and detonating hundreds of bombs in bazaars, mosques,
and other civilian areas. Human Rights Watch has previously stated that those
responsible for violations, including the leaders of these groups, should, if
captured, be investigated and prosecuted for violations of Iraqi law and the
laws of war.

But the activities of these groups are no excuse for U.S. violations. Abuses by one party to a conflict, no matter how egregious, do not justify
violations by the other side. This is a fundamental principle of international
humanitarian law.

The U.S. government has refused to acknowledge the systemic
nature of the problem of detainee abuse in Iraq since 2003, and done little to
address the underlying problems that have led to abuse.

It is time for the Bush Administration to admit that there
has been no real accountability for detainee abuses. It is time for military
and CIA leaders to acknowledge that serious and systemic abuse has occurred,
and recognize the weakness of their internal reporting procedures. It is time
for the U.S. Congress to get serious about oversight on these issues, and work
to ensure that systemic flaws are corrected and that criminal conduct is adequately
investigated and punished, both now and in the future.

Human Rights Watch makes the following recommendations:

Congress should appoint an independent bipartisan commission to
investigate the scope of current and past detainee abuses, identify the
involvement of military and civilian officials in authorizing and allowing
abusive interrogation techniques, and determine why military and civilian
leaders who are implicated in abuse have not been held accountable.

Congress should also re-open hearings on detention abuse issues,
to address the same issues as above.

Congress should push the President to appoint independent
prosecutorsin the military and Justice Departmentto investigate and prosecute
detainee abuse cases, focusing not only on abusive interrogators and guards,
but also on military and civilian leaders who authorized or condoned abuse.

The U.S. military and CIA should identify institutional flaws
that make it difficult for personnel to complain about illegal conduct and
report crimes and abuses being committed by personnel, and remedy those flaws.

The Secretary of Defense should appoint a panel of high-level
members of the various Judge Advocate General Corps to consider reforms in the
criminal justice system of the U.S. military, to increase the power and
independence of military criminal investigators, and to remove institutional
obstacles that make it difficult for personnel to report abuse.

The Attorney-General should work with the Secretary of Defense,
the National Director of Intelligence and the Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency to revise procedures and protocols for investigating and prosecuting
cases of abuse by non-military personnel.